Decidim : Open-Source participatory democracy for cities and organizations
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Decidim is more than a digital platform: it’s a common's free and open project and infrastructure involving code, documentation, design, training courses, a legal framework, collaborative interfaces, user and facilitation communities, and a common vision.
- Co-produce strategic planning
- Run participatory budgeting
- Construct multitudinous deliberation processes
- Enact distributed decision-making
Decidim makes possible for thousands of people to organize democratically by making proposal, joining public meetings, creating delibarative discussion, deciding through different forms of voting, and monitoring the implementation of the decisions.
The code is available on GitHub and the app has been dockerized : https://github.com/decidim/decidim
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Decidim seems to be beginning to get some serious traction, e.g.
Spanish Co-ops are using it for virtual AGMs and assemblies:
https://community.coops.tech/t/online-assembly/2144/3?u=jdaviescoatesThe town authority of Bühl, Germany, is using it internally (and has plans to get the citizens involved too), see:
https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20200630-01.html(the latter article is primary about how Bühl used Jitsi Meet to offer a free video meeting to their citizens, but also touches on their use of Decidim, and is also where I found out about the awesome 4Minitz app)
Would love to see Decidim on Cloudron!
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I installed decidim for a collective of citizens for the local elections of my city in France (Poitiers).
It's a really powerfull software that can be used by small and big entities.
In France, there are also more and more installations.
https://club.decidim.opensourcepolitics.eu/assemblies/Decidim/f/202/ -
I installed decidim for a collective of citizens for the local elections of my city in France (Poitiers).
It's a really powerfull software that can be used by small and big entities.
In France, there are also more and more installations.
https://club.decidim.opensourcepolitics.eu/assemblies/Decidim/f/202/@jeau that's great!
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Okay, so this is back in my crosshairs to one extent or another, and that's good since I don't know of anyone else packaging on a regular basis who spends all day in Ruby like I tend to
The main thing to point out here is that while I definitely can package this, Decidim itself is not an app, but a constellation of Rails engines (it's a Ruby on Rails framework thing - https://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html if you want to read), so it has to be packaged up inside of a host Rails app to actually be of any use. I think such a thing could be written and done to a fairly positive result, with reasonably easy maintenance, but that would be my main concern.
I expect this will likely not be something I'm ready to pick up for a while, so curious to gauge interest in this app specifically, as well as any other feedback about dealbreakers and/or maintenance concerns.
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Okay, so this is back in my crosshairs to one extent or another, and that's good since I don't know of anyone else packaging on a regular basis who spends all day in Ruby like I tend to
The main thing to point out here is that while I definitely can package this, Decidim itself is not an app, but a constellation of Rails engines (it's a Ruby on Rails framework thing - https://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html if you want to read), so it has to be packaged up inside of a host Rails app to actually be of any use. I think such a thing could be written and done to a fairly positive result, with reasonably easy maintenance, but that would be my main concern.
I expect this will likely not be something I'm ready to pick up for a while, so curious to gauge interest in this app specifically, as well as any other feedback about dealbreakers and/or maintenance concerns.
@jimcavoli I'm certainly very interested in this. Would be great to be able to offer it to local authorities large and small to improve their democratic decision making systems.
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Some good news about Decidim
"The agreement establishes a financial contribution framework that serves as a scale for other national or international public bodies that wish to join in the future."
Should hopefully mean the software is well funded going forward.
See:
https://meta.decidim.org/assemblies/general-assembly-association/f/1204/posts/166
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Okay, so this is back in my crosshairs to one extent or another, and that's good since I don't know of anyone else packaging on a regular basis who spends all day in Ruby like I tend to
The main thing to point out here is that while I definitely can package this, Decidim itself is not an app, but a constellation of Rails engines (it's a Ruby on Rails framework thing - https://guides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html if you want to read), so it has to be packaged up inside of a host Rails app to actually be of any use. I think such a thing could be written and done to a fairly positive result, with reasonably easy maintenance, but that would be my main concern.
I expect this will likely not be something I'm ready to pick up for a while, so curious to gauge interest in this app specifically, as well as any other feedback about dealbreakers and/or maintenance concerns.
@jimcavoli I would find this interesting for nonprofits working in civic change
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A new version came out recently, lots of nice improvements. Great to see this getting better and better
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Version 0.26 is out
Looks great! -
Still under development Version v0.29.2 released last month
https://github.com/decidim/decidim/releases/tag/v0.29.2From their blog
https://decidim.org/blog/2025-02-14-decidim-revamp-platform-consolidation-and-improvement-with-ngi-support/
